Off-task but fluent: scoring the 380-word composition
The composition paper offers two topics, each worth 40 marks: content and relevance 15, organisation 10, language 15. Topic 2 reads: 'Town life is breaking family ties. Discuss.' Script X runs to 380 words against guidance of 250–300. It is a well-shaped narrative about a boy's first term at a school in Windhoek - a vivid dormitory scene, a letter home, a grandmother's visit - and town migration and family ties surface only in the final two sentences: 'So I see now that people who go to the city forget their homes.' Script Y takes Topic 1, writes 95 words, and is accurate and relevant throughout but undeveloped. The marker wants to reward X's language, which is the best in the class, and is tempted to give Y full content marks because 'nothing in it is wrong'.
1. Place X and Y in bands and justify the totals.
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X. Content and relevance 4–5/15. The topic is an argument about migration and family ties; X has written a school story that touches the topic in its last two sentences. A single closing sentence cannot carry 15 content marks, and relevance is a ceiling, not a deduction: once the ceiling is set, everything else is scored beneath it. Organisation 8/10 - the narrative is genuinely well shaped, with scene, letter and visit in a clear order, and the examiner may reward structure even when the content is off-target. Language 13–14/15 - the best in the class, and the scheme says so. Total roughly 26/40.
Y. Content and relevance 6–7/15. 'Nothing wrong' is not a descriptor for the top band. The top band asks for a developed argument, a range of points, examples or illustration. Y is relevant and accurate but has not developed anything, so it sits in the middle. Organisation 4–5/10, language 8–9/15. Total roughly 19–21/40.
This is the standard lesson in banded marking: X's brilliant language does not rescue an off-task answer into the top third, and Y's correctness does not amount to development.
2. Set out a defensible policy on the 380-word and 95-word scripts, and say what you will tell the class.
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Policy on length. Unless the scheme names a penalty, length is not marked directly. What length does is constrain the descriptors. 95 words cannot have developed an argument, so Y loses content marks through the development descriptor, not through a word count. 380 words is not penalised as such, but the overrun often shows as repetition or as drift away from the task - as it does in X. A marker who docks marks twice, once for length and once for relevance, has punished X for one weakness twice.
What to tell the class. 'The word guidance tells you how much space a complete answer takes. If you write far less, you probably have not developed your points; if you write far more, check that you are still answering the question rather than telling a story you enjoy. Before you start, underline the key words of the topic - here, town life, breaking, family ties - and check that every paragraph is doing something with them. A narrative can answer a discursive topic only if the argument is carried all the way through, not saved for the last line.'
Add a practical rule: the final paragraph should return explicitly to the terms of the question, and X's last two sentences show why learners leave it too late.
3. The marker argues that X's narrative deserves credit for creativity. How do you respond without discouraging narrative writing?
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Agree with the value and disagree with the placement. Creativity is rewarded in this paper - the title of the assessment includes composition, and narrative craft is a legitimate achievement - but it is rewarded through the language and organisation strands and through the content band only when the writing is doing what the chosen topic asked. A marker cannot invent a creativity strand that the scheme does not contain, and cannot move an off-task script up the content band because the prose is good; that is precisely the inconsistency moderation exists to catch.
The constructive answer is to show the learner how to keep the craft and meet the task. X already has the raw material: the grandmother's visit and the letter home are about family ties. If the boy's reflections on why his father stopped writing, or what the city does to the visits, were threaded through the middle rather than saved for the last line, the same narrative would have scored in the top content band.
So the class message is not 'don't tell stories'. It is: a story can carry an argument, but the argument has to be visible before the final sentence, and in a discursive topic the examiner should be able to find the topic in every paragraph.